CommunicationDisconnect
by criminalfic
Summary: Small character study. Reid has a hard time with his morning coffee.


The coffee shop that Spencer Reid visits every morning before he shoulders his way into Quantico is tolerable only before five pm. Every time he has stepped into the place after dark (three times this year, one Tuesday after a surprisingly early night, one Friday when he made a seven pm coffee run to last another four hours in the office and one Saturday night when he realized he had nothing else to do but go for a walk and drink a coffee) he has been assaulted with the blare of loud, recognizable jazz music coming from the speakers. After five, the shop converts into a small bar as well and the music gets turned up. He sees students lined up at the long wooden tables, at the counters that line the windows, all of them typing on their computers and he wonders how any of them get any work done with all this noise. Everything they do is on display. Standing in line, he watches one of them type in their password to facebook. Five characters, two of them numbers. From the placement of the keys on the keyboard and the pattern of keystrokes that the student typed in, Reid narrows the password down to either lynn14 or lynn15. A wife? He's young, no wedding ring. Girlfriend? Another man sits next to him, puts his hand on his knee. Mother.  
"Small skinny latte at the bar!" The voice is familiar, the same one he hears every morning before he gets his coffee handed over and heads on his way again. This time it's louder, shouted over the Charlie Parker that peppers the air around them in staccato notes and syncopation. "Hi, Spencer. Your usual?" The sound of his name is unconventional, something he's not used to. He has his wallet in his hands, worn thin and white at the creases, stuffed to the brim with receipts, calling cards, scrawled bits of information and phone numbers from contacts. His filing system is erratic, but it makes sense to him. "You know my name." It's not a question, but an observation. Behind the counter is a woman he knows only by the name Jack, which he has assumed for at least the past six months was short for Jacqueline or something else. She wears the usual uniform, the pressed white blouse and fitted black pants, no apron, no name tag. He knows her name is Jack because that's what the other workers and occasional customers call her. He can think of at least six different instances in the past two months in which her-  
"You come here at least three times a week and order the same thing, and you don't think I know your name? Medium house blend, black with extra sugar." She doesn't confirm, just hits the total in the machine. "Three seventeen."  
Spencer Reid realizes that he is predictable. His fist clenches around his wallet and, with a quick look at the menu chalked up behind her, stutters out his reply. "Actually, uh, tonight I'm going to have a.. a large cappuccino, extra foam."  
This change barely registers on Jack's face. She nods, lifts an eyebrow and retotals. "Four-twenty four."  
"How did you know my name?" Jack is reaching for the bank card he's handing over to pay. Of all the things stuffed in Spencer's wallet, cash isn't one of them. Jack swipes it, tears and discards the receipt. He never asks for it. Instead of handing it back, she leans over the counter, her elbows hitting the top, flipping his card to face him. A manicured fingernail runs over the raised lines of his name under the card number.  
"Observant," he compliments with an impressed smile, a nod.  
"Well, a lot of memory is all about repetition," she offers, looking up behind him.  
Reid's brain whirrs, clicks like a shutter on a camera. "Actually, rote learning is only remotely connected to basic long term memory, mostly when something needs to be remembered in a short amount of time... uh, Eugene Ionesco, in his play, The Lesson? He talks about how impractical rote learning is when applied to real life situations, that it's more important to learn a skill set rather than the millions upon millions of possible outcomes--"  
"Spencer?" Jack's finger lifts and points. "I have a line."

Spencer drinks his cappuccino at the counter, for some reason compelled to attempt a bit of light reading. Three sips in, he chalks it up to a lost four dollars and twenty-four cents. Jack bustles around, a bin of dishes under her arm, propped against her hip. When she reaches Spencer's seat at the counter, she puts the unfinished coffee in the bin and replaces it with another cup, sets the spoon down on the saucer. Spencer looks up from the book and then down at the cup. Leaning in, he sniffs it. Medium, house blend, the sharp smell of the huge amount of sugar filling his nostrils. He reaches in his pocket. "Three seventeen?"  
Jack's hand swats at him and she shakes her head. "But I owe--"  
"Leave it, Spencer." And with that, she's gone, back around the corner, her decision accented by the rattle of dishes in the sink. Spencer wonders if he's predictable, if he has been so stuck in routine that the very removal of himself from it is unbearable not only to himself, but to the observation of others. He glances down at how much of his book he's slogged through. His thumb holds fast to page 421. He's been here about a half an hour, if that. Jack is on her break by now, crouched at a table with a spread of books and a laptop she brought with her. She's working on something, cramming information and work on a page in what he can only imagine is a half an hour break if she's working a regular eight hour shift. He glances at his watch, wrapped tightly around his wrist.  
"I've read that book--" He points to the spine of her textbook and she looks up, somewhat unnerved at the intrusion. Jack peeks at the textbook's name and then gives him an incredulous look.  
"It's a Medieval Lit textbook," she says, as if he doesn't know.  
"You're a graduate student?"  
"Georgetown."  
"You're smart." The lift of his voice is almost hopeful, amazed. Jack seems to take this as a quick insult and she turns her attention back to her books, the blue glow of her laptop screen.  
"You're surprised," she feeds back dryly. Spencer's mouth fumbles for words, stutters out an embarrassing series of syllables and then dries up again. He's got his coffee in his hand.  
"Not surprised," he insists. "Just pleasantly enlightened, I guess. My mother was a professor of fifteenth century literature. She made me read that when I was a kid."  
Jack's expression is still difficult to decipher. Her brow is furrowed curiously, but Spencer knows that everything that comes out of his mouth is moot. She has no idea why he's talking to her like this. Maybe there were cues that he read wrong. Maybe their exchange before, the free coffee, it wasn't an extension of friendship, but just a nice thing to do for the poor guy in the bad sweater who comes in every day. "Oh," she responds with a quick grin. "Well, so how does it end?"  
"How does what end?"  
Jack picks up her textbook. "The book. How does it end?"  
It's a joke. He feels at ease again, his shoulders slumping. He laughs, a strange sound out of the back of his mouth, and then just as he's about to sit across from her, an act which takes courage he didn't know he had, the phone in his pocket rings. He freezes, pulls it out.  
JJ's number spills across the screen.  
"I have to take this," he apologizes, backing towards the door. He dumps his cup in the wash bin near the trash.  
"Hey, JJ," he answers.  
"I'm standing at your desk, ready to give you a file, and you're not here," she says almost admonishingly. Spencer's at his car now, fumbling to pop the door lock.  
"I'm about three minutes away. I'll be there.. I.. hey, JJ?"  
"Yeah, Spence?"  
"Do you think I have trouble relating to people?"  
JJ laughs on the other end, pulls in a breath. "I'll see you in five minutes, Spence." 


End file.
